Gold Fever

by Rich Mole

  By the end of May, the ice was gone. Superintendent Sam Steele walked up the slope behind his office and watched as an astounding 800-boat armada sailed off into the distance. Mont Hawthorne saw strange vessels the likes of which he had never encountered. “One was built square by a fellow who was going down alone,” Hawthorne remembered. “He had two sets of oarlocks, and he had put one in each side. When we passed him, he didn’t seem to be making much headway frontwards. But the funniest boat I ever did see was one four fellows built up near us on Bennett. They had come up the Mississippi from New Orleans on an old side-wheeler, so they built their boat with two small side-wheels instead of using oars. Each wheel was on a crank, and they took turns playing engine.”

  Among the first to push off were the Lippys, along with two male companions. Their pleasant sail ended about 70 kilometres below Lake Bennett. Barely into Miles Canyon, the scow smashed up onto a half-hidden rock. It was stuck fast. Crouching down in the boat, Salome clutched her baby tightly. A quick inspection revealed that the scow was not damaged. As the water surged around them, ropes were thrown around nearby boulders, and heaving with all their might, the men refloated the scow.

  Moments later, the heavily loaded boat turned alarmingly and then began to spiral out of control, sucked into a deadly whirlpool. The bow dipped dangerously as the frantic men strained at the rudder and their oars. Gradually, the scow floated free. There was no time to think as the craft raced through the foam of White Horse Rapids.

  With a splintering of wood, a jarring concussion tossed the passengers about. Horrified, the Lippys and their friends gazed at the damaged bow. With an agonizing scream, one of the men threw himself overboard and was quickly swept away, out of sight. Grabbing an oar and the rudder, the remaining two men eased the damaged boat off the rock and carefully steered through the white water to a sandbar. Shaking and breathless, the group staggered ashore without so much as getting their feet wet. Others fared far worse.

  The Lippys’ terrified companion was one of 10 men who disappeared in the foaming waters. Sam Steele estimated that about 150 boats and their cargoes had been smashed to pieces on the treacherous river. He decided the time had come to stop the carnage. At the Whitehorse Rapids detachment, Steele asked his men to assemble as many of the travellers together as they could. Steele knew that most of his audience would be American. This was a good opportunity to let them know who was in charge and what they could expect. There would be no apologies.

  “There are many of your countrymen who have said that the Mounted Police make the laws as they go along,” Steele shouted out to the crowd, “and I am going to do so now for your own good.”

  There were to be no more women and children in boats. Instead, they could walk the short trek around the rapids. Fines of $100 awaited anyone who flaunted the regulations. Corporal Edward Dixon, who happened to be an experienced river pilot, was ordered to assess the competency of all those at oars and rudders and appoint substitutes if necessary, Steele told the crowd. Standing next to the skippers inside steamers’ wheelhouses, the corporal steered the vessels through the rapids. He never lost a boat.

  Before the year was out, Sam Steele was comfortably housed in a cabin at Dawson City. Here, NWMP foot patrols were conducted 24 hours a day, and a good number of the police force’s “guests” housed in jail cells were employed in the Royal Fuel Factory, swinging axes and pushing saws to replenish the huge woodpile.

  “Robert Russell got 18 months on the woodpile and really deserved more,” the Klondike Nugget told its readers. The man was “broke and sick,” but was nursed back to health by the police surgeon and then employed in the officers’ mess. How did he repay the Mounties? “By stealing everything in sight,” the newspaper reported. “The woodpile at temperatures of 50 below may work reformation.”

  During the summer, woodcutting became clean-up duty, 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. As Dawson City’s lawless discovered, the wages of sin were hard-earned, indeed.

  But what was to be done about the town’s twin vices, gambling and prostitution? These were activities that few civilized cities of the time countenanced—at least, officially. Yet, this was Dawson City, where life was harsh, toil was even harder and refined women still a tiny minority. Steele knew full well that gambling and prostitution were “seen in the eyes of the majority of the community a necessary evil,” as he reminded his superiors at NWMP headquarters in Regina, Saskatchewan. The NWMP allowed the dance halls, gambling dens and saloons to operate without much restriction. However, Steele warned saloonkeepers that if he heard about cheating, he’d close them up. About the only other time these doors were closed was on Sunday, when virtually all commerce shut down.

  Prostitution was a particularly thorny issue. At first, the prostitutes operated out of tents throughout the town. Steele had them congregate in one location, just off Front Street, behind dance-hall row. The growth of the town meant that the cribs along this “Paradise Alley,” were situated on increasingly valuable real estate. At the urging of property-hungry merchants, Steele ordered the ladies moved to a more remote location, a bit of swampland which became known as “Hell’s Half Acre,” where they continued to ply their trade.

  The Mounties’ worldwide reputation for dogged determination and understated courage in the face of danger was firmly established during the Klondike Gold Rush. One of the many small dramas played out in the Yukon between lawman and criminal was witnessed by dog puncher Arthur Walden, who was working a claim on Last Chance Creek, about 30 kilometres from Dawson.

  No one knows what sparked the argument between two prospecting partners, but before the day was done, one had shot and killed the other. Many heard the shot ring out and watched the killer dash into his cabin and bar the door. His threat was loud and clear: he would kill any man who came near. All work stopped, and while angry, armed miners watched the cabin from behind trees and brush, a volunteer raced away to Dawson to bring back the police.

  When a solitary constable finally arrived, Walden and others warned him that it was “certain death” to get within shooting range of the man. The stout log cabin topped with a foot of dirt on the roof was, Walden figured, “a first-class fort. All he needed to do to make a loop hole was to poke some moss out from between the logs.”

  Tired after his long trek, the Mountie sat down and had a smoke. Then, while the tense crowd looked on, the constable stubbed out his cigarette and sighed, “Well, I’ll guess I’ll have to make a try at it.” The Mountie simply strode up to the cabin, pounded on the door and ordered, “Open, in the Queen’s name!”

  “Every gun of the watchers was turned on that door,” Walden recalled, “law or no law, I think every man intended to shoot the occupant if the policeman were killed.”

  Instead of blazing away, the killer threw open the door and stepped out with hands extended, ready to be handcuffed. The Mountie hadn’t even drawn his revolver. The stunned prospectors couldn’t believe it. “The whole thing was done with about as much spectacular display as if the policeman had been looking for a piece of string to tie up a dog with,” Walden marvelled.

  Disbelief deepened when the prisoner confessed to the constable that he simply waited, “till you got near enough so I couldn’t miss you. I had every intention of killing you . . . but I found it impossible to shoot down in cold blood a man who was braver than I.” He then turned to the slack-jawed men gathered around him and told the Mountie in no uncertain terms he “would have liked to get in a few shots at these blankety-blank cowards who had me surrounded, only they were hardly worth it.”

  Watching the constable start down the trail with his prisoner, Walden concluded, “This was the method of the North-West Mounted Police: one man for a man. But they had the majesty of English law back of them.”

  EPILOGUE

  The Beginning of the End

  The Klondike’s tens of thousands of stampeders left behind jobs, homes and families to chase their gold-rush dream of instant wealth. For all but a select fe
w, it was a dream that would never come true. All the best gold-bearing dirt had already been claimed long before any of the dreamers even began their journey north. Unfortunately, none of the would-be prospectors learned this terrible truth until they had travelled more than 1,000 kilometres to Dawson City. By the time the first of them arrived in the early fall of 1897, there was scarcely a decent gold-bearing creek left unclaimed in which to dip a pan.

  Saying Goodbye

  Dawson City and Grand Forks thronged with thousands of men. Feet dangling in the dirt, they sat in rows on the edge of raised wooden sidewalks with nothing to do and little to live on. Some helped others find gold as paid labourers, working the claims of millionaires. Men outnumbered jobs and crew wages plummeted. By the fall of 1898, the exodus back to civilization had already begun. Some of the Klondike’s most well-known figures joined the thousands who had already departed. One was Superintendent Charles Constantine.

  Constantine’s four-year term in the Yukon had been a period of astounding change and overwhelming demands. His first small police contingent of 20 officers had grown to a force of 264 manning a network of 31 posts. As Constantine and his family floated down the Yukon River, he paused to make a brief, but undeniably heartfelt entry in his diary: “Left Dawson per str. C.H. Hamilton. Thank God for the release.”

  Ironically, one man who stayed while so many others left was someone who’d regarded his stay in the Yukon as merely a temporary posting. With the unexpected removal of James Walsh, William Ogilvie, the one-time government surveyor, was thrust into the position of commissioner. Ogilvie, the incorruptible civil servant, later returned to eastern Canada and became an author, writing one of the gold-rush era’s most valuable narratives, Early Days in the Yukon. He died a pauper.

  By the summer of 1898, reporter Tappan Adney had filed his last Klondike story. Adney recorded his adventures in The Klondike Stampede, a book still read avidly today. By the time it was published, however, the Klondike Gold Rush was “old news.” Initial book sales were not large. Adney’s lesser-known legacy remains his most important. For years he crafted dozens of meticulous scale models of Aboriginal bark canoes. These models and his painstaking notes about their design and construction tell us almost everything we know about this now-vanished cultural art form. In 1950, Adney died in near poverty in New Brunswick.

  In September 1899, Superintendent Samuel Steele was suddenly dismissed from the Klondike. Steele had run afoul of his superiors again. The Klondike Nugget pulled no editorial punches, claiming Steele’s removal was the work of Minister of the Interior Clifford Sifton and “the Sifton gang of political pirates.”

  Steele was revered by the people he protected. Thousands of grateful Klondikers saw him off at the wharf. Alex McDonald was asked to present Steele with a gift of gold nuggets. “Here, Sam,” the taciturn millionaire mumbled, “Here y’are. Poke for you. Goodbye.” The Klondike Nugget was much more fulsome, calling Steele “a man of spotless reputation,” and “the most highly respected man in the Yukon today.”

  Sam Steele’s career was far from over. The Boer War brought him the opportunity to organize a special mounted unit, Lord Strathcona’s Horse, which added more lustre to the reputation of both the man and the country he’d served so well. Steele died in England. His Winnipeg funeral—the largest that western Canada had ever seen— put an abrupt halt to the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike. Police and strikers alike paused to honour the man who’d personified law and order in Canada’s far-flung frontiers.

  The Future of the Fortunate Few

  Some millionaires outlived their riches. Thomas and Salome Lippy sold their enormously rich Klondike claim in 1903, returned to Seattle, built a grand home and began to invest their fortune. The couple’s streak finally ran out when the Great Depression rendered their investments worthless. The couple died bankrupt and impoverished.

  After touring Paris and Rome and enjoying an audience with the Pope, Big Alex McDonald continued to use successful claims as collateral against other purchases, most of which turned out to be worthless. Eventually, his house of cards collapsed. Years later, the body of the impoverished “King of the Klondike” was discovered lying in the place where his heart had stopped. McDonald had been sawing firewood outside his little cabin in the Stewart River region.

  Others, including John J. Healy, Jack McQuesten and Clarence and Ethel Berry, lived out their long lives in luxury. The Berrys struck it rich three times. Leaving the Yukon wealthier than they could have imagined, they found more riches in Fairbanks, Alaska. Later they turned their yellow gold to “black gold” and founded California’s Berry Oil Company.

  Others, however, did not live out the gold rush. Joe Ladue finally married his long-time sweetheart, Anna Mason. She was still waiting for him in the spring of 1897 when he travelled back to the eastern United States. Anna’s wealthy family welcomed millionaire Ladue as one of their own. Wedded bliss was short-lived, however. Twenty years of wilderness hardship had taken their toll. Ladue died of tuberculosis less than a year later.

  Jefferson “Soapy” Smith met his death at the barrel of a gun. In response to yet another theft, the leader of Skagway’s vigilante committee, Frank Reid, went gunning for Smith. “There’ll be trouble unless the gold is returned,” a Skagway News reporter told Smith.

  “By God, trouble is what I’m looking for,” Smith shouted. He found more than enough of it on one of William Moore’s wharves. Armed with a rifle, a revolver and a derringer, Soapy Smith stomped down to disrupt a vigilantes’ meeting. Barring his way was Frank Reid.

  “You can’t go down there, Smith,” Reid calmly told him.

  “Damn you, Reid, you’re at the bottom of all my troubles,” Smith snarled, stepping forward. Now the two men were within arm’s length of each other. “I should have got rid of you three months ago.”

  Soapy Smith levelled his Winchester at Reid. Frank jerked the barrel downward and drew his own revolver. The hammer clicked on a dead cartridge as Soapy Smith’s rifle sent a bullet into Reid’s groin. Through his pain, Reid squeezed the trigger again. Smith stumbled back from a fatal shot to the heart, discharging his rifle again, hitting Reid in the leg. Both men staggered to the planking. Reid fired again, hitting Soapy Smith’s left leg.

  “I’m badly hurt boys, but I got him first,” Reid mumbled to the gathering crowd. Soapy Smith was dead in minutes. It took Reid days to die. His funeral was the largest in Skagway’s history.

  By October 1889, Robert Henderson, arguably the Klondike’s biggest loser, had left the Yukon. His slurs against Skookum Jim and Tagish Charlie had been, in part, the reason why Carmack never told him first about the strike on Rabbit Creek. Henderson’s lengthy isolation on Gold Bottom Creek cost him dearly. In the weeks following his discoveries there, the mining laws had changed. When he reached Fortymile, Henderson was stunned to learn he could register just one of his three claims, one discovered less than 60 days before. The time factor alone made his Gold Bottom claims worthless.

  “These discoveries rightly belong to me,” he railed, “and I will contest them as a Canadian as long as I live!”

  Henderson was anxious to leave the Yukon to rejoin his family in Colorado. Bad luck dogged him every step of the way. The bitter prospector was iced in at Circle City, where he became so ill that he sold one of his former claims to pay medical bills. When he arrived in Seattle, he was virtually penniless. A shipboard thief had stolen what little gold Henderson had left.

  By pure chance, Henderson bumped into Tappan Adney in Seattle. He told the reporter his anguished tale. If Minister of the Interior Clifford Sifton could grant blocks of claims to men who’d never even seen the Yukon, Adney wrote, “Surely it would be a graceful act for him to yet do something for this man, who scorns to be a beggar.” Anxious to promote the notion that a Canadian was at least partly responsible for the great rush to riches in its own territory, the federal government awarded Henderson $200 a month for life. Henderson was ready to set out on yet another pros
pecting expedition when cancer claimed him in 1933.

  The men whose discovery started it all worked steadily on their claims until the summer of 1899. Exhausted millionaires George Carmack, Skookum Jim and Tagish Charlie packed up for a vacation to Seattle. The trip to the outside was a maddening experience for Carmack, who watched “civilization” undo his partners and his wife.

  After losing control and hacking up a hotel’s wooden banisters (so she could find her way to her room), Kate found herself in the Seattle city jail. Before the night was through, Skookum Jim was also behind bars. “So much for the debasing tendencies of great wealth and the firewater of the white man,” the newspaper moralized. Carmack realized this was no way for a man to make his mark in polite society and become an influential member of the business community.

  “I am disgusted with the whole outfit,” Carmack wrote to his sister in California. “My, but the papers had a nice writeup. If Kate’s trunks were here, I would ship her back to Dyea mighty quick.”

  Carmack bought out his partners and parted from Kate. He became a married man again in 1900—although he insisted that he’d never actually married Kate in the first place. Marguerite Laimme was his new bride. She was a seasoned gold-camp habitué of the South African and Australian gold rushes, who had become the prosperous owner of one of the infamous Dawson City “cigar stores,” which were establishments that sold much more than smokes. Kate filed for divorce from Carmack and then sued for maintenance. The suit came to nothing. She returned to her Tagish family in the North. For the next 19 years, she lived in a ramshackle cabin at Carcross until influenza claimed her in 1920.